A Tale of Two Cities/ Book the Second/ Chapter VII

CHAPTER VII: MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN

MONSEIGNEUR, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held
his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was
in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of
Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without.
Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow
a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds
supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's
chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur,
without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.

Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and
the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches
in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by
Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One
lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a
second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he
bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a
fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It
was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these
attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring
Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his
chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have
died of two.

Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the
Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur
was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So
polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the
Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles
of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. A
happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all countries
similarly favoured!- always was for England (by way of example), in
the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.

Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business,
which was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular
public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it
must all go his way- tend to his own power and pocket. Of his
pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly
noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order
(altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much)
ran: "The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur."

Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept
into his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both
classes of affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General.
As to finances public, because Monseigneur could not make anything
at all of them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who
could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich,
and Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was
growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent,
while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the
cheapest garment she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize
upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General,
carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top of it, was
now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated before by
mankind- always excepting superior mankind of the blood of
Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with the
loftiest contempt.

A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his
stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women
waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and
forage where he could, the Farmer-General- howsoever his matrimonial
relations conduced to social morality- was at least the greatest
reality among the personages who attended at the hotel of
Monseigneur that day.

For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned
with every device of decoration that the taste and skin of the time
could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with
any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere
(and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre
Dame, almost equidistant from the two extremes, could see them
both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business-
if that could have been anybody's business, at the house of
Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowledge;
naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion
of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with
sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for
their several callings all lying horribly in pretending to belong to
them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and
therefore foisted on all public employments from which anything was to
be got; these were to be told off by the score and the score. People
not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet equally
unconnected with anything that was real, or with lives passed in
travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, were no
less abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of dainty
remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their
courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who
had discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which
the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest
to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any
ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur.
Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the world with words,
and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with
Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at
this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite
gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time-
and has been since- to be known by its fruits of indifference to every
natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state of
exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these
various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that
the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur- forming a
goodly half of the polite company- would have found it hard to
discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in
her manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except
for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world-
which does not go far towards the realisation of the name of mother-
there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the
unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming
grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.

The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in
attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen
exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague
misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong. As a
promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become
members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then
considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar,
and turn cataleptic on the spot- thereby setting up a highly
intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance.
Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into
another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about "the Centre
of Truth:" holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth-
which did not need much demonstration- but had not got out of the
Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the
Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by
fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much
discoursing with spirits went on- and it did a world of good which
never became manifest.

But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of
Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only
been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been
eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of
hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended,
such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the
sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever.
The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little pendent
trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved; these golden fetters
rang like precious little bells; and what with that ringing, and
with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen, there was a
flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring
hunger far away.

Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping
all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball
that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through
Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals
of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball
descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm,
was required to officiate "frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat,
pumps, and white silk stockings." At the gallows and the wheel-the axe
was a rarity- Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his
brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest,
to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the
company at Monseigneur's reception in that seventeen hundred and
eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted
in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk
stockinged, would see the very stars out!

Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his
chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown
open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and
fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to bowing down in
body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven- which may
have been one among other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur
never troubled it.

Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one
happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably
passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference
of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in
due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the
chocolate sprites, and was seen no more.

The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little
storm, and the precious little bells went ringing down-stairs. There
was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat
under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the
mirrors on his way out.

"I devote you," said this person, stopping at the last door on his
way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, "to the Devil!"

With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken
the dust from his feet, and quietly walked down-stairs.

He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in
manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent
paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on
it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly
pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or
dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided. They
persisted in changing colour sometimes, and they would be occasionally
dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then, they
gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance.
Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be
found in the line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the
eyes, being much too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of
the face made, it was a handsome face, and a remarkable one.

Its owner went down-stairs into the courtyard, got into his
carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at the
reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might
have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the
circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people
dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being
run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the
furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or
to the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself
audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow
streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard
driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner.
But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in
this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get
out of their difficulties as they could.

With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of
consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage
dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming
before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out
of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of
its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry
from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.

But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not
have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave
their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got
down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles.

"What has gone wrong?" said Monsieur, calmly looking out.

A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the
feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain,
and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.

"Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!" said a ragged and submissive man,
"it is a child."

"Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?"

"Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis- it is a pity- yes."

The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it
was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man
suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage,
Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his
sword-hilt.

"Killed!" shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms
at their length above his head, and staring at him. "Dead!"

The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There
was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but
watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger.
Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had
been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who
had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur
the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere
rats come out of their holes.

He took out his purse.

"It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot take
care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for
ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses.
See! Give him that."

He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads
craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The
tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, "Dead!"

He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the
rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his
shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some
women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently
about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.

"I know all, I know all," said the last comer. "Be a brave man, my
Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to
live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an
hour as happily?"

"You are a philosopher, you there," said the Marquis, smiling.
"How do they call you?"

"They call me Defarge."

"Of what trade?"

"Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine."

"Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine," said the Marquis,
throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you will. The
horses there; are they right?"

Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur
the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away
with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common
thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his
ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and
ringing on its floor.

"Hold!" said Monsieur the Marquis. "Hold the horses! Who threw
that?"

He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood,
a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on
the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was
the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.

"You dogs!" said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged
front, except as to the spots on his nose: "I would ride over any of
you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew
which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were
sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels."

So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their
experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and
beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised.
Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up
steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It was not for his
dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and
over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again, and
gave the word "Go on!"

He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick
succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the
Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the
whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The
rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained
looking on for hours; soldiers and police often passing between them
and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and
through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle
and hidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the
bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching
the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball- when the
one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with
the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift
river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into
death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats
were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball
was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.